Amazon’s Ring is raising monthly and annual subscription fees for doorbell cameras

It’s not just streaming services that are hitting customers with price hikes. Now Amazon-owned Ring has announced that those who subscribe to its entry-level plans will be paying more for the service beginning next month.

This week, Ring announced that it is raising the cost for its Ring Protect Basic plan on March 11, 2024. From that date, the Ring Protect Basic plan will be priced as follows:

  • $4.99 a month (up from $3.99)
  • $49
The quest to build more accessible music tech for blind and visually impaired artists

Stevie Wonder. Ray Charles. Andrea Bocelli. If you were to ask a random person to name a blind musician, one of those three would almost inevitably come up. Ask that same person about up-and-coming blind musicians, and they’ll likely draw a blank.

That’s no accident, according to Athan Billias, president of the MIDI Association, the nonprofit organization in charge of the MIDI standard. “Music production is much more visually oriented,” than it used to be

Here’s the state of civil space policy in 2024

If the past few years have been about growth and planning in the space community, 2024 is the year of regulation and execution, according to some leading space experts.

Space is unlikely to play a big role in President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in about a month, so we’re taking this opportunity to examine the state of civil space policy in 2024. Be sure to come back next week for our dispatch on the state of national security space.

The

CodeSignal’s new AI platform wants to be the Duolingo of tech education

The interview and assessment platform CodeSignal has a new AI-powered, online learning platform that aims to build professionals’ technical skills, as companies everywhere struggle to keep up with rapidly changing technology.

On Thursday, the company debuted CodeSignal Learn, which features about 100 technical skills courses ranging from intro to programming to full stack engineering. CodeSignal Learn will offer a free tier and a paid tier, which will cost $24.99 per month. T

The FCC just put AI robocaller creeps on notice during election year

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Thursday made it illegal to place AI-generated robocalls to voters in the U.S.

The issue came into sharp focus when New Hampshire voters received AI-generated calls in the voice of Joe Biden implying that if they cast a ballot in the state’s primary they couldn’t vote in the general election.

The FCC commissioners voted unanimously to make explicit that the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which already ou

Why EU regulators can rein in Big Tech, and the U.S. can’t

When Amazon announced last week that it was backing off a bid to purchase Roomba-maker iRobot, the two companies cited a familiar refrain: “Amazon’s proposed acquisition of iRobot has no path to regulatory approval in the European Union,” read a statement from iRobot.

That the EU was scrutinizing the deal came as no huge surprise: Over the last few years, European regulators have also stymied M&A efforts between Adobe and Figma and Booking Holdings and Etraveli,

Why Arm Holdings stock price is soaring today

Shares of Arm Holdings skyrocketed over 50% on the Nasdaq Thursday following the release of its fiscal Q3 earnings report. The U.K.-based designer of central processing unit (CPU) chips reported adjusted earnings per share of 29 cents, compared to the expected 25 cents, and revenue reaching $824 million against an expected $762 million.

Investor excitement is likely also being fueled by the company’s boosted sales guidance for fiscal 2024, which it raised from roughly $3.08 b

How Turkey built a thriving gaming industry—and how it’s informing other countries’ gaming push

When Volkan Taban cofounded Gamester in 2009 to develop browser and mobile games, his company was one of only a handful of companies in Turkey’s gaming industry. A dearth of local talent made scaling in a nascent space challenging. “Since there were no companies, there were no experienced workers. Since there were no experienced workers, there were no successful companies,” he says.

As Turkey has welcomed more gaming start-ups over the ensuing 15 years, gam

Today’s top business headlines: Uber’s profitable, Snap is struggling, and Disney is getting deeper into gaming

Snap stock plummets: Will Snap shares continue to fall today, after dropping as low as $11.08 on Wednesday? The 34% plunge in stock price comes after the company reported disappointing Q4 results, including slower ad revenue growth—at a time when rivals Meta and Google increased ad revenue by 25% and 11%, respectively. The Snapchat parent also announced it would cut 10% of its workforce on Monday. Full story.

Uber earnings release: Uber reported $1.89 billion in profits for 2

Google is beginning to flex its Gemini muscle

Google said Thursday it’s bringing its new Gemini language models to the public in some new ways, including via a new web portal, a renewed chatbot, and some mobile apps

The company’s Bard chatbot, which was once powered by the LaMDA model, is now powered by Gemini. Google has changed the name of Bard to “Gemini” in honor of the upgrade.

The largest and most performant of Google’s family of large language models is called Ultra. The LLM,


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